sext: it is a sweltering august night and we are caught up in the music of our own naked bodies. it is not 1969 but i feel woodstock in my bones.

sext: finger me like i am the strings of your favorite guitar, until my vertebrae vibrate with the melodies hidden in between the spaces of my spinal cord.

sext: the needle touches vinyl and i can’t get my hands off of you.

sext: our breaths quicken into quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes. we crescendo to a chorus of carbon dioxide and then begin again, panting.

sext: i’m stevie nicks and you’re tom petty. remind me that there is still a way to translate love into music. remind me that a heartbeat can be shared territory.

sext: even my name sounds like music when wound around your tongue.

sext: save your forevers for a stadium packed with screaming lights. i just want your now, amplified loud enough to shatter my stereophonic rib cage.

sext: come closer, i want to map out your body on a mix tape and press replay so many times that you can hear the smudged fingertip traces.

sext: whoever they are, wherever they are, they are singing about us.

sext: they will always be singing about us.

every three seconds, a plane makes
a landing somewhere in the world.
still, i wonder whether the hundreds
of people perched inside each belly
are coming home or merely touching
the ground before leaving it again.
and i wonder if i'll always be the one to
memorize time zones instead of faces
and leave a carousel of empty suitcase
hearts forever circling ground behind.
i only take what i can carry and a love
of that size has no hope to cheat gravity.
eighty percent of the population has a
fear of the world beyond the altitudes
but somewhere down the line, my heart
was made a compass pointing due north.
in another life, i think i would've worn a
perky blue hat and crimson lipstick smile,
pouring drinks and charming passengers
if it meant that i could call the sky home.
when i was a child, my mother was made
to gate off staircases and barricade the
stepladders so that i would not mistake
them as pathways leading up to heaven.
i used to imagine she'd open my chest
to find nothing but clouded blue air and
hollow bones, my pulse tapping out in
morse code the only wish i've ever had:
please, make me a bird and let me fly.

i sometimes wonder how far i could run.

not during a jog of leisure
or the magic of a childhood race reincarnate.
but a run where everything would matter.

if i had something to lose.
if something was chasing me.
if i was truly tested.

would the adrenaline
pulsing past my heartbeat
make me forget exhaustion?

would the world simply fade
to me and my unsteady breath,
telling legends from my lungs?

would my feet carry me
distances unmeasured, my
thoughts unraveling into stardust?

given the chance, would i fly?

last night, you turned
and sang me a queen song,
one of your favorites.

and i thought about freddie,
and the millions of others,
and who they had sung this to,
using his words
to play on the heartstrings
of girls who love through their ears.

and i wondered if you meant them.

but instead of asking, i just listened
and kissed you on the nose.

because what else can you do
with a good old fashioned lover boy.

i.*   i've always loved the way the earth looks from an airplane window, small enough that i can filter through an entire city with my fingers and never encounter a single face that inhabits it. but this time, i looked out and could see nothing but green for miles. it was as if god himself could put his infinite hands together and they would still fill with trees and branches and coffee-stained rivers instead of people. i didn't know it was possible to drown in so much color.

ii.   a man who spoke in splintered english and carried a machete told me that he could survive in the rainforest for a month without supplies, that the jungle ran through his bloodstream as he imagined gasoline and city lights flickered through mine. the day he took us hiking on the trails, he glided through the understory barefoot, pausing just long enough each time to see if we were keeping up.

iii.   some mornings, i lay in bed still wishing i could turn the chorus of car horns outside my window into the songs of howler monkeys echoing across the treetops and into my dreams.

iv.   at night, we walked down a beach, dragging sand and weariness in our socks and watching the waves crest along the shore. i looked to my right and the stars leaned so close into the forest that they simply became twinkling electric lights atop palm tree lampposts. my feet even tasted the stars beneath them; when i kicked up sand, tiny constellations startled scurrying ***** into the tide.

v.   you will always be the first country that trusted me with a bottle in my hand, as i stole through the midnight streets of san pedro with the taste of *** mixing in with the laughter i felt hidden under my tongue. and in the morning, i awoke to a faint dizziness and the memory of boys who bought me drinks and asked for nothing more than a dance and a handful of stories in return.

vi.   *muy exótica, they murmured as i walked down the road, my heartbeat syncing with the wheels of my suitcase as they rolled over the uneven dirt. a pair of enamored scarlet macaws held no magic for them now; the real exotic specimen was the girl whose almond eyes were filled with desert sand, whose skin only became mocha when the sun stared at it too long. they couldn't turn away.

vii.   i still have countless bug bites that dance across the backs of my legs in tingling trails. i hope the scars stay long enough for me to trace them back to the place where they were choreographed.

viii.   only one of a thousand sea turtle hatchlings will reach adulthood, yet i watched one of eight make its way from my hand to the ocean until it caught the sunrise and disappeared. i kept my palm open as i waved goodbye, hoping he would someday be able to read his way back home.

ix.   the last night, we danced under a shower of stars and you told me about a time that you smoked until twilight and saw sea turtles dancing on the beach to bob marley. while we were sitting there wishing the storm would swallow up time, i imagined piro beach was littered with the shells of sea turtles using the moonlight as it pulsed off the waves to teach each other how to salsa too.

x.   i've never written a love song, but i spent my days in a hammock wishing i knew enough words in spanish to weave together one for costa rica. i wonder if i will spend my life falling in love with places and scattering pieces of my heart across the continents like turtle eggs without ever finding the one location i'd like to bury them deep into the sand and wait for life to dig its way back out.

do not fall for a boy with a pirate heart, even if he will
cross five thousand miles of sand and ocean to be with you,
carrying nothing more than loneliness and longing in his cargo hold.
those things will bond you both together like an oath, but
blood is thicker than water and soon, the promises will weigh you down
like rocks in your pocket, keeping your lungs and heart empty.
he will not stay, something will always call him away in the morning,
even after you've spent the night wrapped in his strong arms,
counting the stars from the undersides of the highest sail.
you will listen to his stories, for they will stretch beyond the decks
of his ship and make you feel both empty and full at once,
but you cannot rely on a tattooed smile to forge you a key to the world.
eventually, he will leave you on stranger shores, soaking and breathless,
wondering when the next tide will bring him close to you again.
but you are not a ***** he found bar-side, never call yourself that.
you must be unpredictable and wild as the sea itself, bottling storms
into your heartbeat and braiding a barrier reef into your hair.
you are calypso, dangerous and beautiful and unyielding,
and if he comes back ten years from now to set foot on the shore,
you will not be waiting. you cannot always be waiting.
he might tell you he loves you. but even then, he is only speaking
about the seventy percent he is familiar with, the part that is pulled into
rises and falls by the moon, a dna sequence patterned by the earth itself.
do not answer him. steal his ship by sunrise instead and plan to follow
the treasure map that you've long since forgotten. never come back.
leave him with a seashell at his side and he will remember at last
that the reason he loved the ocean was because it sounded like you.

I.
i was fourteen when i learned that columbus brought
guns and shackles to the new world instead of turkey.
last weekend, when you told me what happened to you
the night of october fourteenth, i had to check both of
your wrists to make sure they weren’t bound together.
i had to grow sea legs in the backseat of a parked car.

II.
sometimes hands are not kind.
sometimes hands explore people like diseases invade towns,
choking the distance between breath and body in seconds.
when he touched you that night, you must have confused
the cobweb of lines across his palm for transatlantic cables.
you must have forgotten that each year, the ocean spits out the
skeletons of ships who rattle the tides without her permission.

III.
when christopher columbus hit land, he wanted gold so badly that
he excavated it from the hearts of natives, took a midas hammer
to their spines until they bled pools of light around his ankles.
that autumn night, it happened to you too, didn’t it, golden girl?
except afterward, the stain you left on the white sheets was red.

IV.**
in 1491, no one thought that the earth was flat.
sometimes history tries to rewrite things that make no sense,
that should never have happened to cities carved from trees
or girls whose bodies sing electricity into the midnight air.
if you listen, you can still hear the hiss of sparks on cold flesh.
you won’t forget the smell. they can’t remember anything else.

i.   on our first date, you ask if i want to learn how to fly. guiding my trembling fingers over the yoke, you introduce me to an old friend, a mechanical anatomy you’ve had memorized since you were sixteen. the first time your hands leave the two of us alone, you watch my terrified eyes and laugh. flying is the easy part, you say.

ii.   there was a time when explorers would name new lands after people they loved instead of themselves. somehow i’ve never found that idea comforting. it worries me that places out there exist that can wear my name better than i do. on nights when you’re gone, i spend hours trying to picture what an island looks like when it smiles.

iii.   even as she was bathed in the icy blood of a dying vessel, rose sang a love song to the stars. when i think of romance, i think of hands that dissolve into air so that hearts have to sprout wings just to find each other on the way down. i think of ships of dreams and flying machines.

iv.   these days, i have stopped waiting for the silhouettes of planes to paint demolition across the sunset. when i’m lonely, i play fleetwood mac records and spin around the apartment until i exorcize all the ghosts. i try to convince myself that when loving rhiannon, no one gets to win.

v.*  on our last night, i ask you what the hardest part of being a pilot is. you unstitch your eyes from the cerulean-sewn skyline and look at me. *landing, you say. your hand feels warm in mine.

i am not the girl your mother warned you about.
you know, the one with the pierced lip and a glare
that could start a fire during the monsoon season.
the girl whose arms are inky wings entwined with
weeds and paper chain reminders of past loves.
the girl whose name tastes like smoke on your lips
and whose report cards are littered with the one
letter that begins her most favorite swear word.

i am not the girl your mother warned you about.
the only relics that i carry on my body are scars
from playgrounds that kissed me back too hard.
my lungs consist of both words and silences,
neither of which i have found a way to control.
i am a few inches short of dangerous and about
nineteen years wiser than a pack of cigarettes.

your mother warned you about the girls who
are hurricanes, that will see your body as a stone
they can toss across the oceans without a second
glance. hearts going seventy miles an hour have
no time for regret. but there is always a sign
or a season that brings them; each one you meet
will be mapped out on a list of broken promises;
hazel, audrey, katrina. they won't let you forget.

but i am not a hurricane; i am a california earthquake
with a 7.8 on the richter scale of volatile personalities.
i will come without warning and dissolve the earth
into dust under your feet. there will be nowhere for
you to hide; your body will unravel into war with itself,
and your mother, wide-eyed, will wonder why you
let me in. but i know better. she taught you to train
your eyes to the sky when not even a seismograph
could pick out a heartbeat buried 1800 miles deep.

dear body,

please don't get used to sleep.
just admit it.

as nice as it is to settle into
the warm embrace of your thoughts
and rise before the clock counts out,
there is so much you will have missed.

3 a.m with a boy who may
sing you a song or tell you a secret.
you might even cry when it passes from
his lips to your ears in the midnight air
(though you won't exactly know why.)

the fevered attempts to outrun the morning,
your feet fold and slick on the wet grass,
but a haughty laugh keeping the sun at bay
and the chill of the stars off your shoulders.

or even the frantic pitter-patter of keys
as you race the escape of the story
your mind forgot to tell.

so i apologize in advance
for the nodding off during conversation,
the necessity of an extra cappuccino shot,
the added stress of deadlines missed
and the missed alarms waking you to reality.

but after all, my dear,
isn't it those wonder nights that make you
want to be alive in the morning?

the only love affair i've ever had
is with the world in motion.
the permanent state of impermanence
that wakes me every morning
to question the sky above
(something no human has ever done.)

and i'd much sooner heed the call of escape
than the sigh of my name from your lips,
because i know that nothing will ever
look as beautiful as it does
from the window of a moving car
as i fly past it,
for now.

or maybe forever.

i've never been homeless.
that's to say, i've never slept on concrete
or had my pick of the countless lawn gnomes
of suburbia to rest my head against,
away from the light of a campfire
and a scary story to tease my eyes shut.

but if someone were to ask me,
sweetheart, where is your home?
a cab driver with an open window,
or perhaps a caring stranger,
his coat pockets lined with tissues,
i still wouldn't quite know how to answer.

you never called back.
or maybe you did.
but by that time,
the water was emptied
and my heart crumbled
into a valley of ashes.

i was done swimming
in hope's shallow pool,
which i knew would share in
the pulse of a telephone ring,
if it ever happened.

and i still see your green light
when i turn toward the dock,
but i can see there is a light
much brighter beyond it now,
the yellow of the sun.

to remind me that there is more
than jazz, the emptiness of
liquor left to disappear into heat
and a girl with a voice full of money.

someone once told me
i was worth the whole ****
bunch of you all put together.
for the first time, i think i believe it.

you are five when you discover how much bigger the room becomes when your mother leaves your bedside at night, and ten when science still doesn't explain why. you grow up beside a puppy that cries at your disappearance and welcomes you home with fire-lit eyes every evening. at fifteen, you fall in love with the way shadows look when they're holding hands in the summer. and then, you meet a girl who laughs into silence and measures your smile with her tongue and are confused when she refuses to trail the clouds among your footsteps.

because not all of us grew up that way, thinking that the world was a hurricane that we needed to be anchored against, or a song wasn't complete without a countermelody to wrap around its rough edges. we sat around miniature globes and imagined how the constellations looked in venice. we drew minutes into hours on the backs of our hands, we became our own best thing thing. and each time the sun went down, we'd look past the shadows in the concrete and rejoice in the freedom entwined between our fingers where you were convinced her hands belonged.

the last time i waited for life, it hit me like a car crash.
glass ground into dust, bones playing off each other like
a skeletal rockshow; i was a human kaleidoscope.
when i finally opened my eyes again, i saw clouds in
the cracks on the sidewalk, found pieces of myself
smashed into concrete like a chalk-drawing anatomy.
skin met ground easily, like it always belonged there.

life must be the hit-and-run type, because i never saw
its eyes leave the road ahead; i never even saw it look
back. accidents happen, they will say, when they find me
unfolded like a street art snow angel. and maybe they do.
but more likely, the car windows were obscured by dirt
or the roads gave up on storing rain for the springtime.

or maybe it’s just me, a permanent fixture of boulevards
that smell like regret and missed chances, trying to predict  
changing street lights like they are signals for starting over.
just another halcyon disaster zone, entertaining the collision
of twin headlights on skin, the iceberg that devoured a ship
just for declaring that it had dreams to carry across the sea.

i will never stop turning myself inside out to see if the future
is something inscribed on dna, to watch the pieces of my soul
bleed into each other like wax in a technicolored lava lamp.
i will never stop filtering life through a maze of mirrors and
colors, tilting it this way and that until i can turn the pieces
of broken glass into keys that fit the lock of an escape car.

i will never stop.

we were twelve
when you wrote this,
handing it to me as we walked outside,
your face expressionless:

stories tell of fair maiden
of nobility and royalty and charm
yet of all surpassed true beauty expressed
of thine she is second to none.

her laughter, it shines like the moonlight,
her smile's piercing light rivals the sun,
and when in a gloom, she'll light up the room,
of this she is second to none.

i paused behind when you left,
your feet treading through the crumble of autumn,
determined, i think, not to look back
upon the confused girl
who had only read of maidens
in her story books
and could not find one in her mirror.

there is an old persian legend of a man who falls in love
with a woman and goes insane when he cannot have her.
even after she is married to someone else, he spends his days
composing love songs in the dirt, building sandcastle hearts
just to watch them collapse again when the tide rolls back in.

years pass, and the girl never writes anything back.
i still wonder if she was ever given the chance to.

i was twenty-seven when i learned that you could fashion a
stethoscope out of a cassette tape, broadcast the sounds of your
heart to a double guitar riff that screamed desire. you pressed
play and in an instant, i was priest to your deepest confessional.

i never asked about how you looked at me on the days that my
husband was too busy finding god to join me in bed at night.
i never wanted to know that you sinned in the color of my eyes.
i never thought i’d be remembered for the moment that i traded
krishna for *******, and the thousand days that followed:

day 176: we mix love and self-destruction in an old hotel room
until they go down my throat as easily as sweet red wine.
day 472: you turn watching me get ready for a party into an
excuse to make love to my reflection with the windows open.
day 894: you spend the entire morning restringing your guitar
but i can still recognize another woman’s voice in its tone.
day 1000: i loved you but never had the instruments to prove it.

we’ve both realized that obsession is a drug best left to legend.

to this day, they still call me the greatest muse of rock and roll,
but each switch of the radio dial is just another reminder that i
once tasted like music in the mouths of men, that their words built
me up like a flower-child mona lisa in all the permanence of three
minutes of vinyl, that though i inspired the most beautiful lyrics  
ever written about love, they never called me onstage to sing them.

i was once told that if you love a woman to the point of madness, she
will become it. but any insanity i have remains etched on the insides
of my veins; i walk beaches now, much too old for sandcastle-building.

years pass, and the girl has never written anything back.
i still wonder if she will ever be given the chance to.

even the world’s greatest muses sometimes want to hold the pen.

i love like someone who has been sent out on a mission,
even though espionage now exists through a computer screen
and the wars of our country have long since turned hot.

i love like i have a hidden wire for a heart,
with another's voice rattling through my bones:
a casual touch here, a kiss there, maybe even a smile.
be careful though, someone is always watching.

i love like you have a roll of film in your pocket
that i need to obtain, whatever it takes.
so i'll laugh at your jokes and run my hand down
your coat lining until i taste the secrets you keep there.

i love like someone will review the tapes later
and share in the inside joke of rustling chiffon
against skin, and the punchlines you missed
while you were staring into my eyes.

i love like a character i've invented specifically for you,
a girl that exists only inside of your mind.

i kiss like all the girls you remember and sound like
all of the moments you cannot forget.

and when we're done, you will feel like you're the one
who has cracked this foreign code wide open
and left her smile on the floor for the world to see.
but i'll sit in silence, looking at my empty hands and realizing
there was never an operative in loving you.

my favorite love story
isn't that of romeo and juliet
or cinderella and her prince,
but of music and lyrics.

because before them,
love was just the shiver
when you touched her hand
or the sweet madness of a kiss.

and now,
love is more than alive
on the breaths of musicians
who breathe the legend in every song.

sometimes you show me photos
of the places you've been
and spout off stories of
how the tops of mountains
taste differently on the other side
of the ocean or how you saw
exactly the kind of dress i would love
in the window of a shop in japan.

but let me tell you,
every time i've tried to capture a moment,
and bottle it back to be relived in the
comforts of your living room,
the film always turns out blank.

your breath traces symbols on my skin,
highlighting key points on a map
that you've long since memorized.
but my arms are not a turnstile you
can pass through to arrive somewhere new.

it seems i've forgotten that
one heart cannot create a new time zone,
no matter how furiously it beats or
from how far away you can hear its echo.

even if i won't ever admit it,
i want to be remembered.

i think that's why i give
mix tapes and mp3s
instead of picture frames
and flower bunches.

i'll give you something that lasts,
something that will restore
your youth with every lyric
and caress your memory
with every opening chord.

you'll forget the girls in the frames.
they're all just empty smiles
and red satin fading into the grey
of the photo album in your attic.

but you'll remember the girl
who taught you that listening
can be most intimate.
and whose breath
you can always taste
in each crescendo.

when i was little,
i was a thief of white paper,
multicolored markets,
and a single word.

on each sheet, i scrawled my name repeatedly,
color after color, row by row,
searching for myself in its void
until the page became a schizophrenic rainbow.

now, i fill the gaps of lined notebooks
with ink scribbles and confused monologues,
using words other than the one i was born with
until the page dims into a smeared haze.

yet somehow its purpose remains.

one summer, you volunteered
to teach me how to swim, saying:
i can show you everything
from backstroke to freestyle,
and when you're tired, you will learn
to tuck air into your pockets
so when the waves rush in,
they will be the ones gasping for breath.

they trained you to be alert, wary.
to keep an eye on the children playing
tag in the shallows, and especially on
the older woman awaiting the next tide.
they taught you how to lift your eyes up,
while still keeping your mind on the ground.
they taught you to listen to pulses and breaths,
and to know what it takes to keep a heart alive.

i thought you were trained for this.

but love caught you distracted,
in a torrent that swept all your knowledge
into the open sea, your heart along with it.
he dragged you into the waves and
kissed oxygen into your mouth
every time the water's chill
danced down your spine.

and when you finally resurfaced,
i had to describe to you what the sun
looked like from beyond the sand.

you told me about the first day,
when they stood before you
and announced the most important
lesson of lifeguarding:
always save yourself first.

sometimes i wish you'd forget about
30:2 and buoys and boys named marcus,
and memorize that instead.

if i had an art museum,
it would have a blue roof
and white walls, and
it would be filled with
nothing but mirrors.

one by one,
people would walk in,
expecting to see a dali,
da vinci, or van gogh
along the hallway.

but instead, they would
spend the day becoming
connoisseurs of their own
curves, freckles, and
wavering footsteps.

and i'd sit in a corner
with a notepad in hand
and an unseen smile.
people sometimes forget
that they too are art.

i wish there was a warning
i could wear around my neck,
the kind you would recognize
from the beakers in your lab.

careful: volatile substance.

maybe then
you wouldn't be so shocked
over my habit to disappear,
my body evaporating into air
and leaving nothing behind
to even let you know
i had ever been there at all.

when i was little,
people confused me
so i made friends with
the pavement instead.

all summer long,
we traded scraped knees
and cement skid marks,
admiring our scars
like secrets in the dark.

and when autumn came,
and the other girls looked out
for matching bracelets,
i hunted for matching scars
and the ones that i knew
would understand.

you have to remind yourself that it won't always be like this. that someday approaches (probably faster than you think) and when it arrives, it will wake you up at 6:00 a.m for work you could do better at 9. hopefully, you'll enjoy it. someday will keep you fastened to a desk and cramped in a cubicle, your fingers typing out memos and emails and spreadsheets quicker than your legs ever carried you during your middle school mile. someday might chase away the little things that nudge you in the back of your brain when you remember that there is a world outside your window. someday will make you wish you had the luxury of being nineteen on summer break and calling yourself bored. and someday will come. maybe tomorrow or maybe a few years from now, when you trade in your textbooks for road maps and your goals for yesterdays.

but right now, here you are, calling yourself bored. you are not bored. how can you be, when you are nineteen on summer break with cinnamon hair that has just been kissed lighter by the sun? when you still have fictional characters to cry over or philosophical paradoxes to ponder or world hunger to solve or even just a heart that is still in need of breaking by a boy across the sea. you can't stop someday from stealing peter pan away from your bedroom window and diminishing neverland into a castle of ashes, but you can remind yourself that it's just some day. and right now, you have an infinite number of them in front of you, just waiting to be seized.

when i was little, i used to
be afraid that if i cried too much,
i would shrivel up into nothing.
it was only in elementary school,
when i learned that human beings
are made of seventy percent water,
that i realized no one could ever
cry enough tears to leave only
a mouthful of dust behind.
no matter how much sorrow
you stirred out from under your skin,
there would always be just
enough left behind to dissolve
the next breath of oxygen.

when dolphins are born, they burst into the water tail first.
within minutes, their mother herds them up to the surface
for a first breath of air, sharp and dry,
as they exhale a spray of water into the sky.
when dolphins are born, they are born smiling.

when i was born, i opened my mouth before i opened my eyes
and screamed for thirty minutes straight,
my young lungs choking on the unfamiliar taste of air, sharp and dry.
by the time i blinked through my first spray of tears,
my mother said there were enough to fill the pacific ocean twice over.
she said she hoped that it would be enough to last me a lifetime.

in 1966, a twenty-four year old brian wilson began recording
a teenage symphony to god.
smoke in his lungs and fire in his heart,
he transcribed the california dreams that kept him up at night,
held his breath underwater until he saw constellations in the pool,
built a sandbox beneath his grand piano just to bring the surf inside.
even after wilson shelved his SMiLE in favor of
pillbox teeth and bedsheet sunsets,
the world never stopped searching for it.

in high school, my nickname was "smiles"
because it's all i ever seemed to do.
i navigated campus like i was being showcased in a tank half full,
jumped through hoops of
fire,
boys,
and college apps alike
without ever showing an ounce of discomfort,
like perfect was indeed possible without practice,
or even possible at all.
it became easier to dive deeper, move quieter,
bury my insecurities beneath a wide-eyed grin.
no one notices an overabundance of skin or body or
words when confronted by a hundred-tooth barricade.

i went through boys like storms go through ships,
my fingers springing accidental leaks into each of their sides
until they fell,
captivated,
captivating,
capsized,
spiraling into the depths below.
yet i was always the first to hear their cries when the tides withdrew,
the only siren in the world capable of regret,
the eye of the hurricane that granted them safety.
even after i emerged from the fray,
soaking and breathless and alone,
my eyes were dry, my smile buoyed in place.
staring out over the wreckage behind me,
i did not know it was possible to feel anything but relief.

it is 2016 and brian wilson is seventy-three years old.
he has felt every vibration, good and bad, and now chooses both,
now understands that every summer must eventually come to an end.
on the days he feels alone at his grand piano, he wanders down to the beach,
buries his toes in sand still warmed by the sun.
when he smiles, the ocean roars in approval.
as he closes his eyes, it calls for an encore.

these days, i have stopped ornamenting myself with illusions,
though sometimes i can still feel them tug at the corners of my mouth.
i am too wary, too large, too loud to be sealed behind glass anymore,
to either save or be saved.
some days, i wake up and there is not ocean enough in the world to contain me.

when dolphins are born, they are born smiling.
that doesn’t mean that they are always happy.
even when tossed by a sea of its own blood,
surrounded by the gaping jaws of
mothers
and brothers
and daughters
who can no longer sing back,
a dolphin cannot frown.
i have long learned to be grateful for my ability to.

my smiles come and go,
brought on tides i can no longer control.
but each time one washes ashore,
i cradle it in my arms before letting it go.
just another wild thing that needs to be free.

the sky was dark
and the moon moved
in and out,
in and out
from behind the clouds.

so she and i sat under the windshield,
numbering the stars on our wrists
and wishing reality wouldn't
begin at nineteen
when we opened the car door.

i can't sleep on nights when
the temperatures are too high.
charles's law was not wrong
when it said that gases expand
when they're heated.
it turns out that words do too.

or maybe it's not the words
that are gaseous, bursting
through my subconscious
like fireworks on fourths
you wish you'd missed.

the thoughts behind the words,
they're what i cannot escape.
the dimension beneath expression
and release, the tides that begin
near my heart but never quite
reach a shoreline to crash on.

i've heard that heat waves
**** more people than any
other natural disaster, yet
they trace my skin at night
and i swear, i've never felt
more awake.

a scientist scrawled onto a piece of crumpled paper
and made one simple request.

he called her an enigma and longed to solve her
like he had everything else.
a new experiment, a problem, a challenge.

but she was an artist,
made of words instead of atoms,
preferring constellations to chemistry.

and as she answered, she felt afraid
because she knew he would never succeed.

the earthquake falters,
but still i crumble.

it turns out what i felt
had nothing to do with

numbers on a
richter scale,

though it
devastated me
just the same.

for nine years, you’ve starved me of words,
trading syllables for meaning like candy on
an elementary school playground. there are
thousands of entries now, scraped a to z and
in between from the alphabet until it bleeds.
but who cares, no big deal. you want more.
hours past midnight and the tea in your red
mug has gone cold again. lately, you’ve
converted to a religion of definitions but i
still hear you praying for truth in your sleep.
when we walk together, the sky feels more
like a region of atmosphere than the basin
your sister tried to bury herself in last fall.
when they found her crumpled like a lace
dress promise under the tree in your yard,
you wouldn’t watch the leaves dance for
weeks. it think it reminded you too much
of the way we play in the tears of clouds
every time it rains, when you should be
thinking of gravity (noun): the force that
attracts a body toward the center of the
earth. you see, that’s all it is to you now,
words paraded as equations and locked
between the pages of your very own bible.
but some nights, you are god only over
my hands. some nights, we extinguish the
candles and leave the words alone, watch
them dance like embers from a flaming tree.
when you ask me the meaning of love (noun),
i draw in a breath but let the words firefly on
above me. i do not regret letting them go.
i still do not regret you.

you think i will love you less if you reveal more of yourself,
but i've learned that people aren't built like magic tricks; their
enchantment doesn't come from what's in front of your face.
so throw out your deck of cards, let loose the chains.
set your rabbit free. you don't need to pull something out of a hat
in order to keep me mesmerized. the show i want is less
illusion and more introduction. waving a plastic wand and
counting to three can't conjure the words out of your throat;
only you can do that. you've sawed yourself in half, tied your
wrists with a burning rope, escaped from tanks of half-frozen water,
all to convince an audience that you exist to disappear, to dance
among flames and never tell anyone how you escaped the burn.
but i did not volunteer to take part in this trick; i would rather
hold your hand than find out what's hidden up your sleeve.
at night, you hold me and whisper in my ear, pick a card.
but even i can predict the one that will appear in my hand.
a seven, for the number of times you've refused to turn on the lights,
even after the smoke has run out and we are completely alone.
and a suit of hearts, namely, my heart, the one i must settle for
when i ask for yours and you offer me a mirror instead.
a magician never reveals his secrets, this much i know.
but i've long since learned that fireworks are packages
of gunpowder and lights stained with chemicals, not magic.
i'd love you even if i opened your chest to find you the same.

you always ask me about love when i think that we are creating it.
when our entwined legs mimic the twin quotation marks encircling
a silence, your fingers tracing out crop circles onto my chest as if
they're attempting to communicate every scar across the galaxy.
i will answer with an alarm clock heartbeat and a tongue that glides
through your ear like honey: some people only love in the dark.
it's guarded with a harlequin smile but what i wish i could say is this:

i believe that people's hearts meet like plane engines on landing pads,
crashing down just long enough to leave trails on the concrete before
they realize how much they miss tasting the air between their toes.
i believe that when sid first saw nancy, his bloodstream confused her
smile with the iv that supplied his starving veins punk rock & poison.
i believe that love either leaves you to bleed or to wish you still could.

but i also believe that love can last. for nine long years, hachiko
nuzzled against packed concrete and waited on empty railway cars
because the odds were, his dead owner would have to come home.
there is a man who serenaded his shower walls with the name of a
disappearing girl; i hear he still makes love to her ghost every night,
surrounded by a stadium-lit choir who wouldn't recognize her face.

the last time you asked me about forever, i realized that stars don't
even last that long, let alone feelings we shove inside pericardium.
what we deem unsinkable can hit one glacier and send a thousand
into the sea; forever is three syllables that even titanic can't touch.
my nineteen years are a paper anchor if this ship ever goes down,
but i'll be ****** if a psychic's visions of fire and ice and endings
stop me from falling in love on deck until the band stops playing.

they said that i couldn't be a writer.

not until i could trap my thoughts in parallel lines before 4 a.m
or until they could see my work as concrete instead of mist.

but i've written symphonies without reading a single note,
composed verses on the curve of a person's smile,
scribbled out a narrative through the fog of a bus window.

the world is mine.
the words are mine.

and they will never know.

sometimes, i imagine
the sky splitting above me
in silence, then in light.

and it's been years since little boy,
but i still worry about a world
stopped in sequence.

after all,
airplanes and atom bombs
aren't so different from
burnt promises and
the cancer of a lie.

i don't quite know what i expect out of a phone call at one a.m. maybe that it will cross three hundred miles and bring your voice close enough so i can caress its every pause and articulation. maybe that it will somehow make two weeks dissolve into seconds and echo back to life the moments i may have missed. maybe that it will end in i love you. but this technology is a fragile thing, for it can funnel sound across continents and still miscarry what's needed to be heard most.

i don't quite know what i expected from a phone call at one a.m. but it certainly wasn't for a minute between sighs to seem like an hour, like it does when my lungs gasp hopelessly for breath underwater. it wasn't for me to prove that i don't need you, when i may be coming to terms with the fact that i just might. it wasn't for my heart to feel so empty, grasping at the static and the rain to conjure you forth from miles away. i reach out into the morning but a phone call at one a.m cannot fix you. not too long ago, i wouldn't have thought that it needed to.

they say that summer's when you hate yourself. you look down at the valleys between your thighs and the hills making their way across your stomach and let the beach towel drape across your chest instead of on the sand. they say that summer's where you find yourself, in the internships between semesters and the hours spent with your fingers wrapped in a telephone cord, your feet dangling off the edge of the desk. yet i think that summer's where i lose myself. in the time that seems both endless and ending, and the sunrises that i both greet and miss (usually the latter). the ocean is crisp and clear, yet the grass is just as inviting and so is a game football or even a game of "who can eat the most marshmallows" in between swallows of laughter and air. summer's the season of love, emanating from the records in my room to the hot air outside. it doesn't matter what tomorrow means, or when he'll come home (or if he ever will at all). **you are young. you are beautiful. you are the summer. and you've only just begun.

i should be able to
leave a word,
                                                                  hanging
off the edge of a page without feeling so very
guilty
about how the lines just
           don't
                      match
                                      up.
or how the spaces between them should be equal
and counted out:
                                 1,
            2,
                                                      37,
infinity.
                i just don't want to be
STUCK
                                        erasing,
                              always
                                            erasing
what i
think
to fit
what i
see.

i used to think i was the bravest girl in the world, the one
who was going to reach her arms out to grasp sunbeams
and absorb hurt like inverse constellations into her skin.
i'd go up to doctors and dare them to stick me with their needles
and diagnoses, taunt coaches to push me harder in practices,
shed tears like fallen leaves to humor myself on occasion.
i was a tiger shark, alone and comfortable in my shadow, but
knowing that any pause could stop the water from becoming
air in my lungs; i'd kiss and sometimes i swear i tasted blood.
but now i know friends who have lost things in darkness that
they can never reclaim, no matter what lights they turn on,
and nineteen seems closer to both everything and nothing.
now i love like someone who is more afraid of drowning
in her own cup of water than the ocean, even though the
waves have never been anything less than welcoming.
i've seen talent and courage drain into a needle and bottle,
a hoodie and dark skin become the uniform of suspicion,
a country of the free bleed onto its own striped flag.
listen, it's forgotten the words to its own national anthem.
so then where, in the mix of war paint and firewood,
is there a place for the fierce but not fearless,
the ones who want nothing but need everything, and
who are still sometimes afraid of their own voices?

she said it back but she still wasn't sure.
the words just     s
                                   p
                                        i
                                             l
                                                  l
           ­                                            e
                                                            d  ­   from her lips
as they had only two times before
to others with the same questioning mouths
and nervous eyes.

because she could never navigate
the fracture of a silence
and somehow,
it made more sense for gravity
to take control
than her heart.

firefly lights are the most efficient in the world
and produce no wasted heat,
yet i imagine one would still burn my tongue
if i held it in my mouth to keep from speaking.

or maybe i should be more like a firefly
and communicate solely through light.
a flash of envy here, a flicker of sorrow there,
my happiness spelled out in a chemical morse code.

tap a firefly egg carefully enough and it glows.
a kiss on my neck, and i may do the same.
but give me sharp words or bruised heartbeats,
and the taste of poison will never leave your tongue.

you see, a firefly's average lifespan is two months,
and its average love story even shorter.
still, it must mean something to find the one
with whom you can rival a constellation
as you dance together at night.